Diana Spencer

[Ally]

Just look at how so many of her friends couldn’t wait to cash in on her fame once she was dead. How many books have been written about her by people who professed friendship? A person can be judged by their friends and Diana seemed to have had a pretty shabby lot.

Just out of curiosity, is this poor valet you are referring to Stephen Barry? Because that is the only valet of Charles by name I can locate, you know, the one who wrote the book: Royal Service: My Twelve Years as Valet to Prince Charles.

[The Grave Maurice]

Perhaps Sir Reg could write a new song about Barry: "Vandal in the Wind".

[Bob Hinton]

Really?

Hello Bob,

I wonder what Elton John would think of your view on Diana's friends.

Best wishes.

And I should care what Reggie Dwight thinks about my views on Diana's friends for why?

[Hatchett]

Hi Bob,

Because I don't think he would like being classed as part of a "pretty shabby lot!"

Do you?

Best wishes.

[Stephen Thomas]

Did someone force Charles to propose to her?

while he was in love with someone else?

Apparently Prince Philip ordered him to propose after the newspapers decided that she was 'the one' after the X-Ray Specs contre jour photo of her holding a small child entranced the nation.

From what I've read and seen on television she seems to me to have been mentally disturbed and a highly devious and manipulative person.

[babybird67]

Did someone force Charles to propose to her?



Apparently Prince Philip ordered him to propose after the newspapers decided that she was 'the one' after the X-Ray Specs contre jour photo of her holding a small child entranced the nation.

From what I've read and seen on television she seems to me to have been mentally disturbed and a highly devious and manipulative person.

And yet telling someone to marry someone else without love/feigning love, and the other person actually doing that and seeing no problem with it, is not at all manipulative or devious. And of course we all know how mentally well the Royal family is.

I have no doubt Diana had mental health issues but she was a very young girl when that family took her and used her for its own ends regardless of her welfare or feelings. How do you think that contributed to her mental health throughout her lifetime?

There are few things I call evil, but taking a young woman and manipulating her into a marriage when you KNOW you love someone else, and you systematically continue with that deception throughout the marriage, is evil, in my opinion.

Of course both Charles and Diana had faults. I think Charles, and his family, need to bear the brunt of the blame though. They did everything with the foreknowledge of knowing they were using her. Her biggest crime was naivete.

[Bob Hinton]

Really?

The last thing Diana was was naive. She was the arch manipulator. She controlled her image through blackmailing the press and flew into a rage if they didn’t follow suit.

When she was discovered having an affair with a surgeon in London, she told the press that if they held off she would give them a much better story – and she gave them the famous ‘Diana being caring at an operation’ nonsense.

She was extremely predatory and if she took a fancy to a man she grabbed him – whether he was married or not was immaterial. I spoke to one person who knew her very, very well and he described her as ‘a pit viper on heat’.

Her infidelities were legion and frequent, both before and during her marriage to Charles.

[Ally]

Ah Bob, nice of you to just ignore my posts like they never existed. I can understand how you'd not want to answer them though.

T
She was extremely predatory and if she took a fancy to a man she grabbed him – whether he was married or not was immaterial. I spoke to one person who knew her very, very well and he described her as ‘a pit viper on heat’.

Predatory viper who just grabbed any man she wanted?! Those poooor men. Forced as they were into affairs and adultery without any choice, raped by the vicious vagina of this woman, their actions entirely beyond their control as their penis was just hurled unwillingly into her clutches.

Her infidelities were legion and frequent, both before and during her marriage to Charles.

And Charles of course was a virgin before marriage and remained faithful for all the days of their wedded bliss.

[babybird67]

of course she was Bob

of course she was.

[Bob Hinton]

Ah Bob, nice of you to just ignore my posts like they never existed.

To me the ramblings of a rabid anti Royalist like you don't!

[Ally]

Considering I am not a rabid anti-royalist, your argument loses some water.

Considering the poor valet you held up as hard done by wrote a book about his experiences is given sympathy by you, while Diana's friends who do the same are some how considered proof of her lack of character, further causes your judgments to lack credibility.

Considering you are a rabid anti-Dianian who apparently condemns her for sleeping around while excusing Charles for doing the same proves you are, what? A rabid sexist who condones behavior in men he condemns in women?

[kensei]

Just today, I watched an episode of "Oprah" that I recorded several weeks back but the tape then sat unwatched for a while, in which she interviewed Sarah Ferguson, who of course has been even more reviled lately than anything said here about Diana. I know I say this as an ignorant American from across the pond, but listening to Fergie talk, it seemed very clear that people who marry into the royal family from totally outside of it find themselves practically on another planet, an alien world in which the stress of fitting in is so overwhelming that no matter how hard they try they know that whatever they do or say is going to be wrong, and so after a while they begin to hate it so much that they rebel against it and start to do wrong things deliberately. I hope so very much that the same does not happen to the new Princess Katherine. So many have written that this is the marriage that absolutely has to last. Fergie, by the way, said though she is broke now she is living in a house provided to her and even sometimes shared with her by her ex Prince Andrew who she is apprently still extremely friendly with. That surprised me. "Why don't you get married again then?" Oprah asked her. And she basically said, "Oh, nobody wants that!" That recent "Newsweek" piece by Tina Brown on how things would be if Diana was still alive speculated that she too might have found herself surprised to be sharing a close friendship with her ex-husband.

When I read any criticism of Diana, one thing pops into my head, and I'm sorry if this is a vague memory. There was a piece on t.v. where a paparazzi photographer was commenting on a shot he took of her at a resort somewhere just as she had received some devastating news- I'm thinking maybe the death of her mother? Please correct me if I'm wrong- and the awful look of "Oh God, not now!" that was conveyed in the picture as she saw the camera. And the guy actually said, "I felt so bad for her- AS I TOOK THE PICTURE!" Come on, man, where's your common decency? Do you have any? You aimed a camera at someone in a moment of utter black despair and you still pushed the button? That's what Diana's life was like. I for one am willing to cut her a very big break.

[Bob Hinton]

Really?

Charles apparently not having a spine

So, what, is Charles actually mentally retarded and incapable of making a decision or standing up for himself?

he managed to keep banging some chick

just a cheating bastard with dreams of being a tampon

Charles was apparently a complete sap

do you really want that kind of a loser as the future head of your country

These are just some of the comments made by Ally recently. But I think the best has to be

Considering I am not a rabid anti-royalist

Really? One would never have guessed. I can’t wait to see how you talk about someone you are against.

Apparently poor Ally can’t grasp the fact that some of us get our information about Charles and Diana from people who actually knew them both – not from the pages of some supermarket tabloid like the National Enquirer!

I think it’s about time Ally ran along and played somewhere else – it’s grownups time now.

[Bob Hinton]

ignorant American from across the pond, but listening to Fergie talk, it seemed very clear that people who marry into the royal family from totally outside of it find themselves practically on another planet, an alien world .

You may be ignorant but that is nothing to be ashamed of. People whose entire life’s experience is that of a head of state who is not part of a Royal Family do have difficulty in understanding the system – in precisely the same way I am totally baffled by the various layers of government you have in the USA.

What is most difficult to understand is that once you join a Royal Family your life is not your own anymore – it belongs to the people and it is your duty to serve them for life. That literally means for life – until you are dead. Prince Phillip is now 90 and he still carries out official tasks, the Queen is in her 85th year and still has a work schedule that would make fitter men wilt. She has been doing the job since 1953 – without a break.

It’s not like presidents who serve for a few years and then go on to other things – there is no retirement, no taking it easy, no letting your hair down. You are under a microscope every second of every minute of every hour – you get the idea now.

Just stop to consider your own life, how many times have you made bad decisions, or done something you shouldn’t have? I know I have and I suspect most of us have, but once you’re a member of the Royal Family everything you do is common property.

Do members of the Royal Family make a hash of things? Of course they do – they are human, and human beings make mistakes. If you don’t want mistakes then replace them with a computer.

But at the final reckoning I would say that on the whole the British have had one hell of a good deal from the Royal Family – would that our politicians worked so hard for us with such integrity.

[Phil H]

...the Queen is in her 85th year and still has a work schedule that would make fitter men wilt. She has been doing the job since 1953 – without a break.

1952 actually - the year she succeeded her father - but she had been carrying out tours and engagements since around 1947, as the King's health failed (Trooping the Colour and a visit to America included).

But at the final reckoning I would say that on the whole the British have had one hell of a good deal from the Royal Family – would that our politicians worked so hard for us with such integrity.

I agree entirely.

But I think the Royal Family did meet something unexpected in Diana as The Queen made clear in her broadcast the day before the funeral.

Elizabeth II's reign has been charcaterised by the approach used so successfully by her father and mother (1936-52). But the pomp, the aloofness are 50s-based. Diana couldn't hack the conventional role - formality, speeches, handshakes and curtseys etc. But she undoubtedly showed a more modern, workable style - hugs, emotion, easiness, a reaching out to hitherto unknown groups. And it worked - though I don't think that the Royal Family as whole appreciated that. Diana was a slap in the face to stuffiness, arid protocol and old-fashioned social values.

Look at what William and Catherine are doing today in Canada - approachable, informal, caring, engaging royalty. (Camilla and Charles have also adopted a somewhat easier style.)

Then look at press coverage this morning of Edward at the Monaco wedding - refernces to Ruritanian uniforms and self-awarded medals.

I am fascinated by military uniforms, old and modern, and love royal pagentry, but I do not question that history will see Diana as a catalyst of needed change. I look at an event like the recent British Royal Wedding and feel that we need to look again at how we stage such events. The uniforms - for all their splendour, looked out of place (theatrical almost) in an era where we are less and less prone of dress up - even for weddings and evenings out - the days when people "changed for dinner, or wore white tie to the theatre are long gone. Ordinary people no longer identify, it seems to me, with attitudes and appearances that smell of old-fashioned deference, class divides and an assumed superiority.

So, though it may not happen for a few years yet (not, i think, while the Queen is with us) we we will a scaling back of what has been the visual style of monarchy in the UK, and an evolution to something much more akin to what Diana trail-blazed.

In part this will be dictated by changing times - how long can you sustain the brigade of Guards/Trooping the Colour in a age of defence cuts and other organisational changes within the Forces? How will the State Opening be relevant (in its pomp etc) when/if the Lords go? Will senators wear robes as pers do? If not, what is the relevance of the Queen's "Parliament robe?"

How will a future Coronation be staged when hereditary peers are no longer legislatiors and all peers may be replaced by elected senators or some such? What of the homage? Who will bear the regalia? There are alternatives but I believe the ceremonial will be very different from what was seen in 1953.

So, to conclude, for all her faults and problems, I think it will be Diana who is seen as a major influence on the future style and look of monarchy and how it reaches out to the public.

Phil